Resident Asylum: Code Harley
by Keith B. Real
Summary: After barely surviving Raccoon City, Harley finds herself imprisoned by Umbrella. Maybe Batgirl will save her. Maybe they'll encounter other iconic Batman characters as they escape Rockfort Island. Who knows?
1. Chapter 1

**One**

"Papillion! That's who I feel like right now," said Harley Quinn, to the four dead men staggering around outside in the prison yard. They couldn't hear her over the rain, as they sloshed through puddles, occasionally falling face-down down in the mud where they sometimes stayed for several minutes before rising again.

Her stomach growled. She sat down on her cot, the only bit of furniture in her cell besides the toilet. It was the middle of the night and she doubted breakfast was gonna be served in the morning. Stretching out, she got ready for another long night of staring at the ceiling, watching shadows cast by the dying fires outside flicker and sway.

At some point, she was gonna have to bust herself out. She could do it, easily, but not quietly, and since her time in Raccoon City had left her with a pretty good idea of what to expect from an Umbrella-brand zombie outbreak, she thought it best to wait for her shambling friends to get a bit soggier before she raised any kind of ruckus.

A good, sober line of thinking, except the mad fire lights on the ceiling made her think about things she'd rather not, memories she'd gladly trade for a dozen zombies or mutants trying to take a bite out of her ass.

She was thinking up one-liners to use in case a mutant did bite her ass when she heard a noise from the dark room outside her cell. Nothing. A rat, maybe. Nah, there was someone there, standin' right in front of the bars, she knew it without lookin'. Harley kept still until she heard the dull ring of a bar being tapped, then bolted upright.

"Mr. J! Aww, I knew you'd... aw, crap!"

"Doctor Quinzel? Is that you?" said the one standing in the dark beyond the bars.

Harley clenched her fists, thought of fire, hoping to burn the image of a grinning, chalk-white face from her mind's eye. "I didn't turn to a life of clown-themed crime to be called 'Doctor Quinzel,' thank you very much... _Batgirl!_"

"Are you hurt?" said Batgirl.

All Harley could see of her was the yellow inlay of her cape and the line of her jaw. Far less imposing than Batman himself, and less flashy than the Boy Wonder, Batgirl was often underestimated, but never by Harley.

"No, I ain't hurt," said Harley. "As a matter of fact, this is one of the nicer prisons I been in."

"What happened here? It looks like there was an attack."

"Sounded like it, too," said Harley, sitting with her back against the concrete wall, remembering the bombing raid from the night before. At first she'd thought one hell of a thunderstorm had hit the island, but thunderstorms were only rarely accompanied by multiple explosions and a zombie-outbreak. "You gonna let me the hell outta here sometime tonight? The toilet don't work no more, ya see, and..."

"I'll get you out, but first I have to know what's going on."

"Pfft. Like you don't know," said Harley. "Let me guess, you talked to Catwoman, or maybe to Ivy, and one or both of 'em told ya how much fun we all had in Raccoon City. How is old Raccoon doin' these days, anyway? I haven't been gettin' the papers."

Batgirl's mouth stiffed and Harley braced for the worst. Romping through a zombie-infested city had been kinda fun, but Haley hadn't been too keen on the notion of a zombie-infested planet.

"The official story is that one of Umbrella's secret nuclear reactors experienced a meltdown," said Batgirl, sneering at the cover story.

"So, no global zombie apocalypse?" said Harley.

"Not yet. And to keep there from ever being one, I need to find out what's been happening on this island. What do you know?"

"I know I ain't sayin' squat until you let me out and hook me up with a Granola bar or somethin'," said Harley. "I'm so hungry I could eat brains."

"Please don't. I'll let you out, but I'm warning you, don't try anything funny. This isn't the time."

"I'll be a good little girl, don't worry," said Harley. "Though I will be crackin' wise the entire time, and generally bein' my usual, whimsical self."

"I can't wait," Batgirl grumbled, kneeling to pick the cell door's lock. She had it open in a few seconds and Harley stepped out, twirling like a ballerina across the room to a particular locker where she'd seen the guards lock up her stuff.

During her processing, she'd been tripped naked, hosed down, and deloused. They'd have shaved her bald had she not promised to bite out the eyes of whoever touched her. While her body was left squeaky clean, there was no saving her leathers. The gross, mutant goo they'd been covered in was pretty well baked into them and they'd been thrown out. Even after the hosing down, Harley's skin smelled like formaldehyde and forbidden science for days.

What she now sought from the locker was her makeup kit.

"We don't have time for that," said Batgirl as Harley covered her face in white greasepaint, using a dirty mirror over a deep sink to see what she was doing.

"You had time to dress up like a bat this morning, so now I got time to do this," said Harley, applying her lipstick, then her black domino mask. She finished it all off by tying her greasy blond hair into pigtails. Stepping back to look at the whole thing in the mirror, she saw she was once again Harley Quinn, or at least she was from the neck up; the rest of her was prisoner #3211.

"Damn it, I look like the late stages of a crappy action figure line," Harley said, clucking her tongue at the ill-fitting orange jumpsuit she wore. At least in Arkham the damn clothes were comfortable.

She followed Batgirl outside into an open area behind a chainlink fence. The rain had let up some, but Harley was still glad her facepaint was the special, water resistant kind only super villains could buy, otherwise she'd look real friggin' stupid right about now.

"I came here on a speedboat," said Batgirl. "I left it down by the beach. You'll be safe there while I snoop around, and there's a bag of Doritos in the glove compartment. You can talk to me over a radio."

"Doritos? What flavor?"

"Uh, cool ranch, I think?"

"Mmm," Harley moaned. "I hope it's a big bag."

Harley had always wanted to hot-wire the Batboat and steal it, so she let Batgirl lead her out of the fenced area and down a washed-out gravel road that wound all the way down to the beach. It would've been a nice walk if not for the rain, the dark, and the frigid blackness of the waves.

The Batboat was almost invisible, colored like it was, until Batgirl pushed a button on her utility belt that made the top slide open. Inside looked cozy, with two seats and all sorts of blinking lights and monitors. Harley imagined being nestled inside, out of the rain and the cold, eatin' Doritos while Batgirl handled all the zombie and monster bullshit. All Harley needed to top it off was a cup of hot cocoa, and she refused to believe there wasn't a bat-cocoa dispenser somewhere in the boat.

"What..."

Harley peered over Batgirl's shoulder. Sitting on the bat-seat was a very un-batlike bomb, just a white package with a timer and wires stickin' out. Both women, having been blown up before, knew they'd never get clear of the blast in time, and on instinct threw themselves to the ground and covered the backs of their heads, praying most of the blast force would be directed up and away from them, and not into their bodies.

Their prayers were answered, but only barely. Harley felt as if she'd been hit in the back with a molten sledgehammer. It was a full minute before she could even stand up, much less hear the rain and crackling flames over the ringing in her ears.

"You think the Doritos are okay?" said Harley, watching Batgirl stagger to her feet in the light of the burning Batboat.

"What!? No! There were never any Doritos!"

So the Doritos were a lie, just like everything else, thought Harley, trying to shake the ringing from her ears. She must've messed herself up good this time, the ringing was different somehow, more like... screeching.

"Do you hear that?" said Batgirl, tweaking one of the bat ears on her cowl. Green lenses slid over the eye holes in the cowl and she looked down the beach to where the screeching was coming from.

Harley shook her head, realized the screeching wasn't her damaged eardrums but something else, something coming closer, and fast.

"Run! Run, now!" said Batgirl.

Harley took off after her, knowing that when one of the Bats was scared, that usually meant some scary stuff was comin' from the other direction.

"What are we runnin' from? Our problems?" Harley shouted.

"Monsters! Lots of them!" shouted Batgirl, taking from her utility belt a handful of what looked to Harley like marbles. "Watch out!" She scattered the tiny balls behind her. After running another fifty yards, the balls started exploding. Harley glanced back to catch a glimpse of whatever was tripping Batgirl's flash-bang mines.

"Humanoid" was the nicest thing she could say about them.

The next thing Batgirl pulled from her belt was her grappling hook gun, which she fired at the top of the cliff. Harley clung tight to Batgirl as the gun retracted the line, pulling them both up the side of cliff. Below them, in the dark by the sloshing sea, the creatures tried to scramble up the side of the rock face, hissing and screeching.

Climbing over the edge of the cliff onto flat ground, Harley and Batgirl found themselves on the same washed out road they'd been on before. The rain, now a drizzle, didn't cover the sound of the monsters trying to climb.

"What... that was a bomb, right?" said Batgirl.

"That or the airbag needs a recall," said Harley.

"Somebody... somebody planted it there... attached a short timer... who, and why?"

Harley shrugged, just as baffled as her companion. "Let's check out the mess hall," she said. "After that, I'll show ya where I think there's an airport."

"Yeah, good idea. We need to secure a way off the island before anything else," said Batgirl.

Harley's stomach growled. The Sneetches by the beaches were no longer emitting screeches, which comforted her not at all. "You can do what you want, I'm securing me a sandwich," said Harley, stomping off in the mud towards the mess hall.

**To be continued... **


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"So, who do ya think blew up your Batboat?" said Harley, rifling through the pantry in the mess hall, looking for something to eat besides off-brand oatmeal.

"I have no idea," said Batgirl, kneeling over the bodies on the floor that had until recently been walking. Harley, who'd picked up a crowbar someone had left lyin' around, had done the honors, showing Batgirl the ins and outs of close-quarters zombie killin'. Harley didn't have many tips on how to keep your lunch down afterwards, but Batgirl seemed to manage that on her own.

"Puddin'!" Harley shouted, startling Batgirl while making herself sad as she beheld a six-pack of Trademark-brand chocolate pudding cups.

"Besides Umbrella employees and prisoners, you've never seen anyone else on this island?" said Batgirl while Harley slurped down pudding cups as fast as she could.

"Nope," said Harley. She sucked down the second to last pudding cup and was about to open the next when the long window at the back of the mess hall shattered and three zombies came crawlin' in, not upset one bit over the broken glass slicing their dead flesh to ribbons.

"I got this," said Batgirl, deploying her quarterstaff. The gadget would have reminded Harley of Darth Maul's light-saber, had that movie been released yet.

More zombies slid through the open window, the stronger ones pulling themselves over the others that had been caught on the broken glass that lined the sill. "Screw it, let's just get outta here," said Harley, smashing one of the zombie-free windows and leaping out.

Batgirl followed as Harley went running over the grounds, the only lights coming from smoldering sheds and bunkhouses. "There!" Harley shouted, pointing across a gravel road to a long, gray building, one that had been tucked at the bottom of a cliff and had been spared the worst of the bombing.

"What's this place?" said Batgirl. "You said you knew where there was an airport?"

They stood under a red emergency light in front of a heavy, steel door. "Stop, listen. You hear that?"

Moans. Shuffling feet. Not just from behind, but from all over. "Sounds like they're coming our way," said Batgirl.

Harley, who'd been desperately trying to fart, relaxed and actually listened to the night air herself. Batgirl was right, the zombies had heard the dinner bell and were on their way. Harley tried opening the door, found it locked. "Hey, how about some breakin' and enterin' here!" she shouted, standing aside so Batgirl could go to work.

Batgirl tried using her picks, the ones that had freed Harley from her cell, but it was no use. She went through various devices on her utility belt while the moans and cries came closer. The first of them came from down the road, a group of guards, all in bloody, disheveled uniforms. Harley thought she could take 'em if she kept moving and didn't let herself get backed into a corner. Then the next group came out of the shadows, a mix of prisoners and guards.

"Uh, no pressure now, but we got an audience," said Harley.

Batgirl held something that looked like the offspring of a Gameboy and a Tricorder from Star Trek. She pointed it at the door lock and turned the dials this way and that. When the ground began to shake, Harley had the mad thought that Batgirl's little machine was somehow to blame. The moment she thought "earthquake" was when the ground exploded, throwing scores of zombies into the air in a dirt geyser.

Harley covered her face as she was pelted with rocks and clumps of dirt. Through the dark and the rain, Harley saw the gray body of a giant worm, receding into the ground like part of an H.P. Lovecraft inspired whack-a-mole game.

"What the hell was that!?" Batgirl shouted.

"You ever see that movie, Tremors?"

Out from the hole it came again, a creature Umbrella Inc.'s legal counsel said was to be referred to as a "Gulp Worm" and never a "Tremor," its gray, segmented body thick as an elephant, writhing around, catching stray zombies with the tentacles ringing its mouth.

They were about to abandon the door and flee into the night when the door suddenly swung open. "Oh, shit," said Harley, seeing the dead guard in the doorway. He stepped out, as did half a dozen others behind him. All Umbrella guards, all with dead eyes and pale, gray skin.

They carried machine guns.

Harley figured this was her final curtain, as did Batgirl, but then both saw the white cards tucked into the zombie's caps. They marched past Harley and Batgirl, leveled their weapons at the worm and opened fire. The two women didn't wait to see how the fight went, each running inside and turning to slam the door closed behind them.

Bewildered, each looked into the other's face for answers. Finding none, their attention swiftly turned to the two zombies still in the hall, holding them at gunpoint, each with a white card in their hats.

"Let me guess, you're Tweedledee, and he's Tweedledum? Just hurry it up and take us to him," said Harley.

The zombies did an about-face and led Harley and Batgirl down a wide, red-tiled hallway. At the end, through a door, was a fancy office, its walls fairly papered with oil paintings of rich, white assholes. A much less rich white asshole was sitting at the desk in the middle of the room, his feet up on the desk: Jarvis Tetch, AKA "The Mad Hatter."

"What's going on here, Tetch?" said Batgirl.

"Everything has gone mad," said the Hatter, taking his over-sized boots off the desk. He was dressed in a musty costume of sorts, giving him the general appearance of the Lewis Carroll character from old pen and ink drawings, except he was in need of a shave.

"You seem to have things under control," said Batgirl. "Are you the one who blew up my boat?"

Hatter was befuddled, then pleased. "No, but it's a good thing someone did, otherwise you wouldn't be able to assist me," he said.

"You ain't mind controllin' me, you weird bastard!" Harley shouted, smacking the zombie next to her in the head with her crowbar.

While Batgirl may not have approved of the unprovoked attack, she more or less had to go along with it, and used her extendable quarterstaff to disarm, then disable, the zombie nearest to her.

Harley snatched up the AK-47 the zombie she'd killed had been holding and pointed it at the Hatter as four more gun-totting dead guys entered from another door.

"Hold your fire!" shouted Hatter. "Mind control won't be necessary. If you want to leave this island, you'll do as I ask."

"Spit it out!" said Harley, shaking her rifle. It was important to always be menacing, even when you were the one being menaced.

"There's someone you must rescue, someone important," said Hatter, glancing towards a painting on the wall. It was of a beautiful, blond-haired woman, angelic in every way except her eyes. The painter had either added, or captured, a terrible coldness, as if the subject possessed the soul of an insect. Beside her was another painting, showing the same person almost, except male, short-haired, dressed in a red coat with a hunting rifle cradled in his arms. He held the wooden expression of a man portrayed by a bored painter.

"Eh, which one?" said Harley.

"Her!" shouted Hatter. "Alexia Ashford, the most beautiful woman in all the world! She's the heiress to Umbrella Incorporated, along with that brother of hers, Alfred. He can burn, but Alexia must be saved! She's a delicate thing, shut away in the manor atop the hill. I'd go myself, but... the bandersnatches."

Harley slapped her forehead, even Batgirl let out a long sigh. "Bandersnatches?"

"Believe it or not, I didn't name them," said Hatter. "They're a line of bioweapon manufactured here by Umbrella. I was hired by the company to make their creations more controllable, specifically these so-called zombies."

"Riddler, Croc, Ivy, now you? Was there an Umbrella job fair in Gotham nobody told me about?" said Harley.

"Why haven't you saved her?" said Batgirl.

"Because, unfortunately, my devices don't work on the bandersnatches, nor are the zombies I can control a match for them. You two, I think, will have better luck."

"And what will you do if we don't?" said Harley. "Stop inviting us to your tea parties?"

"You're never on time anyway," Hatter grumbled. "All functioning aircraft on this island are electronically locked. I've got the keys, so to speak, and if you want to use them, you'll rescue Alexia Ashford for me."

Quaking with rage, Harley struggled not to shoot the Mad Hatter.

"If someone needs to be rescued, I'll rescue them," said Batgirl, stepping in front of Harley. "No threat needed. Where do we find her?"

Hatter smiled, his huge front teeth making him look like a cartoon gopher. "I knew you'd help me, Batgirl. The threat was for this one."

He pushed a button beneath the desk and a painting on the wall behind him slid sideways to reveal a set of stone steps leading downward. "Follow the marble up to the house, you can't miss it," said Hatter. "Mind the bandersnatches. Oh, and Miss Quinn? There's something for you out in the hall, second room on the left."

Harley and Batgirl eyed each other for several moments. Warily, Harley went to the room Hatter had thinly described. Harley tore through the few cardboard boxes she found inside, wondering what game Hatter was playing, then she found it.

A black and red bodysuit, complete with cap and bells. A decent replica of an outfit she commonly wore, though the fabric was a little cheaper. She shed her prison clothes and slipped into it, figuring it wasn't Hatter's style to coat the inside with some kinda acid or poison.

She came prancing back into the office, delighted at how right she felt. "Ta da!" she shouted. "Thanks, Hatter, I ain't even gonna ask what the hell you're doing with this."

"Well, when the head researcher here wanted to use you as a common test subject, I suggested they save you for marketing purposes. You'd be filmed fighting whatever bioweapon Umbrella wants to sell as an anti-supervillain, or some such nonsense. Of course, you would have to look like you, hence the costume."

"I said I _wasn't _gonna ask," said Harley.

An awkward silence fell over them, broken by Hatter. "Right, well, off you go. Save Alexia! Quickly, for I suspect things are going to escalate soon."

Batgirl seemed as though she wanted him to elaborate, but Harley was already bored and went running through the secret passage, down the cold, stone stairs and into the land of the bandersnatches.

**To be continued...**


	3. Chapter 3

**Three.**

The mansion this Alexia broad was supposed to live in had been built on a flat, barren patch of land on the other side of a deep chasm. A marble bridge with ornate railings spanned the widest spot. Batgirl scoped the place out with her fancy cowl, leaving Harley to wonder why they hadn't asked Hatter to at least describe the monsters they were almost sure to encounter.

The rain fell harder. The sky was black as ink, and she barely felt the water drops in her new suit.

"I don't see anything moving around the grounds. The house looks like it has electricity, judging by that one window up there. Can't tell if anyone's inside," said Batgirl.

"There ain't nobody up there," said Harley. "I happen to know a thing or two about casing joints, and that there is a house for rich assholes, the kind that get outta Dodge the moment things turn sour. I'll bet you a new pair of bat-nipples this Alexia chick beat it outta here already."

With that pronouncement, Harley started across the bridge, ready to shoot the shit out of the first zombie, monster, or asshole she saw. She was just startin' to think Hatter might be pullin' a con, when an enormous, deformed human hand slapped over the edge of the bridge railing.

Harley's jaw dropped, thinking the monster enormous until its owner came sliding over the stone railing. She laughed at its odd proportions. Most of it resembled an emaciated human with yellowing skin and a vacant expression, but it's right arm was a huge mass of muscle coiled up like a frog's tongue.

"A wild bandersnatch has appeared!" shouted Harley, aiming her rifle at the thing's face. "Gotta kill 'em all!"

Before she could fire, the muscles in the thing's mutated arm released, sending its fist at Harley. The massive lump of flesh hit her like a truck, knocking her on her ass and sending her rifle sliding across the marble deck. Another mutant hand slapped over the bridge railing. Batgirl was on it immediately, using her quarterstaff to pry away the huge fingers. She didn't move in time to avoid the attack from the other creature and was slammed hard against the marble rail. Harley fired three rounds into the thing's expressionless face, leaving dark, bloodless holes. She was sure a brain shot would kill it, but its body was so deformed it was hard to tell where the gray-matter was kept.

Harley stopped firing as Batgirl rose, charged the creature. She was ready to be hit again from the front, what she was less ready for was the monster to throw its hand like some kind of meaty curve ball at a baseball game. The wet, yellow fist hit Batgirl sideways, sweeping her over the railing.

"Aaand Batgirl's dead," Harley declared, a moment later noticing the grappling hook flying up out of the darkness to latch, just barely, over the stone rail. Harley dove for the hook, driven by some strange instinct she didn't understand nor question, caught it the moment it slipped. She held on tight, the bandersnatch came closer, raising its massive arm high in the air to clobber her.

She should have let go of the hook, avoided the blow. Instead she wrapped her forearm around the thin, synthetic cord, felt it dig into flesh the moment the bandersnatch's fist landed. It felt like someone had dropped a refrigerator full of raw meat on her head, but she held on. The second hit came, showing her stars. The script had called for tweety birds.

The grappling hook line went limp. Harley heard shuffling feet, the sound of a metal quarterstaff striking nerveless flesh. Another big shuffle of feet, then nothing.

"Are you alright?" said Batgirl, kneeling over Harley.

The walk to the house was a fuzzy one. Harley didn't remember answering Batgirl's question. She didn't remember anything past being helped through the mansion's front door. When she was conscious again, it took her a moment to register the fact she'd been laid out red couch in a lavishly decorated parlor. Batgirl was nowhere to be seen, but lying on the coffee table between fancy-ass books no one had ever read were two Uzi machine pistols in a double-hip holster. A note had been scrawled onto a Bat-Post-It note.

"Founds these for you. Stay here until I come back. - BG"

Harley checked the weapons' magazines, found the both full. Better, extra mags were taped to the holsters. Someone had been ready to go all Rambo on zombie ass, but never got the chance. Fine by Harley, who looked around the room thinking about what she might steal. Lots of things, but nothing she could readily pocket, so she shrugged and left the room. Crime just wasn't as much fun when there was no one around to stop you from doing it.

A steep, red-carpeted staircase dominated the narrow foyer. Above was a balcony. Harley considered heading up to look for Batgirl, but went outside instead. She'd get the drop on the Mad Hatter, blow a few of his fingers and toes off, then he'd play ball. And even if he didn't...

Outside in the courtyard stood a man.

He was stopped on his way up the stairs, just as surprised to see Harley as she him, except he took greater pains to hide it. He was dressed neck to toe in black tactical clothing, his platinum blond hair was slicked back. Between all that and his black aviator sunglasses, he looked like a real d-bag.

"Who the hell wears sunglasses at night?" said Harley.

"Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn," said the man, his voice like a board voice-actor in a video game. "My name is Albert Wesker. I have business with the owner of this mansion."

She drew her two machine pistols and aimed them at Wesker. Somehow she just knew everyone called this guy Wesker, never Albert. "You got business with me now, Whiskers," she said. "You gonna tell me what you're up to, or should I just blow you away?"

He shrugged. "You're welcome to try."

Smug asshole, she thought, firing both pistols at him, only to see him dodge the damned bullets like that guy in the Matrix. Suddenly he was gone, then, just as suddenly he was standing right next to her. She hadn't seen him move. Something hit her from behind and she felt like she was falling. Once her marbles returned, she found herself at the bottom of the stairs with Wesker standing over her. "I was hoping the bomb I planted and the Hunters I set loose would be enough to handle you and the bat, but it seems I'll be getting my hands dirty after all," he said.

She aimed a kick at his legs. It was like kicking a tree, a big one that punched her in the gut and grabbed her by the throat all in the time it took to blink. Wesker lifted her up, held her with one arm while squeezing her windpipe shut. She clawed at his arms, kicked with her legs, but he felt none of it.

Just as her lights started to go out, a tremor went through his body; he winced and turned his face towards the sea, as if he'd heard something. "No. No, it can't be, not now!" he said.

Here it comes, thought Harley, figuring he'd crush her windpipe and leave to asphyxiate on the ground. Instead, like a decent villain, he tossed her aside and went running into the night, leaving Harley to choke and sputter.

"Yeah, that's right! Run away, ya sunglasses-at-night-wearing douchebag!" she shouted after him, praying he wouldn't hear her and come back.

She picked up her guns and started up the stairs into the mansion, wanting to find Batgirl and tell her who blew up her Batboat. She found the bat-themed vigilante on her way out in one hell of a hurry.

"Run! He's set the place to blow!" shouted Batgirl, coming down the stairs in the foyer.

No time for questions, Harley followed Batgirl outside and over the marble bridge back to the office where they'd met Mad Hatter. Alone in the room was a zombie with a white card in his hat a note stuck to his chest with a pencil.

"I don't know what you fools did, but the island's self-destruct system is activated! Lucky for you, it unlocks all of the airplanes. I'll be taking one, you can have the other. Don't mind the little crocodile with his gently smiling jaws! - MH" it read.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" said Harley.

"Who cares? Let's go," said Batgirl. "I found out some things while snooping around the mansion. I think I know where to go."

Harley, who'd never been completely sure where the airport was, followed, unnerved by a rather unsettling sense of deja vu.

**To be continued...**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

The aircraft Hatter had left for them was a massive cargo plane parked off the taxiway off a short runway. Staggering around the tarmac were scores of people, former soldiers and airport workers. All of the were dead and hungry, but spread out as they were, Harley and Batgirl were able to run past them and reach the plane.

"I don't see any bombs, do you?" said Batgirl, looking over the cockpit.

"No. So, about that..."

While Batgirl went about getting the plane ready to fly, Harley told her about her meeting with Albert Wesker.

"Wesker... He was the leader of the STARS teams that were killed in the Arklay Mountains outside Raccoon," said Batgirl. "During the first outbreak."

"That guy was a cop? No wonder I didn't like him," said Harley. "You gonna fill me on what happened with you when you was off-screen, or what?"

Batgirl sighed as she worked the controls, bringing the plane to life and rolling it onto the runway just as the first of what would be many explosions were heard outside the cockpit. The zombies on the tarmac were thrown into slow confusion by the sounds of the plane engines and the bombs going off.

"Alexia's brother, Alfred... he either dresses like his sister, or is his sister, I'm not really sure. I know when he failed to shoot me, he activated the island's self-destruct system. Fortunately, I hacked a computer before that happened and downloaded what hope will be enough information to obliterate Umbrella and find cures or vaccines for the weapons they've created."

Harley snapped her fingers. "Ha! I knew there was some Norman Bates crap goin' on around here," she said. "I'm an ally of the trans community, but dressin' like your dead sister and shootin' at people, that's just plain antisocial behavior."

"Right," said Batgirl. "This plane has enough gas to get us where we want to go, I think. Once we're in the air, we can relax."

Harley sat in the copilot's seat and stretched her arms. "Sounds good," she said, thinking about all the ways she could eliminate Batgirl before they landed. Shooting her in the back of the head during takeoff would do the trick, but then what?

They weren't at altitude for long when the plane's lights all started blinking and the stick began moving on its own. Batgirl fought it as best she could, but was unable to keep the plane from banking and heading in a southerly direction, out to sea.

"It's the autopilot, I can't turn it off," said Batgirl.

Harley watched with growing concern as Batgirl tried to override the autopilot, using every gadget in her belt. After an hour, she gave up. "If I do anything else to it, there's a good chance the whole system will go down," said Batgirl. "I think we're going to have to ride this out."

"Damn it, I was ready for the end credits!" shouted Harley, wondering who'd screwed them. Hatter? Wesker? The transportation industry's over-reliance on automation?

The plane shook, as if something had come loose in the back. An alarm went off, an annoying one that resisted all of Harley's attempts to find and smash it.

"Let's go see what it is," said Batgirl.

The plane's cargo hatch was wide open, letting in freezing air. That was certainly one reason the alarm might have gone off. The second reason was the ten-foot tall lizard monster that had woken up and busted free of its holding tank.

"Croc! Good to see...aw," said Harley, remembering the time she'd shot Killer Croc in the head after he'd turned into a zombie and tried to eat her in the Raccoon City sewers.

This was Croc, alright, Harley was sure of it, except he looked as if an energy drink company had given him some kind of "x-treme" makeover, dialing up the Killer and turning down the Croc. For Harley, the concern lie in his right hand. It had sprouted three long, sword-like claws. When Croc moved, she saw the tail. Did Croc ever have a tail before? She couldn't remember. He had one now, though, complete with a spiked, bone club at the end.

"I'll distract him. You send his ass flying out the back with that catapult thingy over there," Harley said, running towards the back of the plane like a gymnast, dodging a swipe from Croc's claw.

The new Croc was faster, more agile than before. He snapped his jaws at Harley, nearly catching her arm, but she rolled between his thick, scaly legs, and came up behind him, firing her machine pistols into his back. The bullets chipped his thick hide, but little more. He took a swing at her with his tail. She leaped, but wasn't quick enough. The flail-like appendage got her legs and she fell, just as the catapult mechanism released. It caught Croc flat-footed and bowled him into Harley. Together they went flying out the back of the plane, through the cold night sky towards a black, churning sea.

Something caught Harley by the foot, stopping her fall and popping every joint she had between her ankle and her hip. Croc continued to fall on his merry way while Harley was pulled upward. Batgirl had made a pretty good shot with her grappling gun, and hauled Harley to safety while the rear hatch closed.

"Ow... ooh, that's gonna be sore," said Harley, rubbing her leg. "Coulda warned me!"

"I had you covered," said Batgirl. "Tell you what, if we find any Doritos on this plane, you can have them."

-QQ-

Sunrise found them still airborne over an empty, cold stretch of water. The cargo plane remained under the control of the auto-pilot, which didn't seem to mind that the plane's fuel tanks were running low. The diminished gauges prompted Batgirl and Harley to scour the plane for anything useful, anything that would help them survive the inevitable crash and subsequent harsh conditions. There was nothing, not even a half-empty bag of Doritos.

Harley gave up long before Batgirl did, and sat in the cockpit, enjoying what she could of the view. They flew into a gray-white haze that made her shiver. Harley didn't mind. It was hard to think about fire when there was so much ice and snow to look at and to feel. She'd see her Puddin' soon, at least. Maybe. Death was strange to her now, less certain, less peaceful.

"This is interesting," said Batgirl, who'd been shuffling through papers she'd found tucked behind the pilot's seat.

"If it ain't a map to a flyin' gas station, I don't wanna hear about it," Harley said.

"Not a flying gas station, no," said Batgirl. "It's a flight plan. A crude one, but if it's correct then we're headed somewhere."

"Yeah, to our cold, watery graves," said Harley, snatching the papers from Batgirl's gloved hand. Her eyes flew over the boring details, confirmed what Batgirl said was true; it was a flight plan, and if it wasn't bullshit, then they were indeed headed somewhere.

"I don't know if the fuel is going to hold out, though," said Batgirl, snatching the papers back. "It'd be a close thing normally, but we didn't exactly run through all the take-off protocols before we left, did we?"

"We basically stole the thing," said Harley, grinning. "Hopefully wherever we crash has a bathroom and a snack bar. I'm hungry and I gotta pee."

She ended up doing her businesses in the back of the cargo plane. If Batgirl did the same, Harley figured she could open the hatch remotely and send the Bat flying to her doom with her ass out, but funny as the notion was, Harley didn't want to die in a plane crash alone, nor be stranded on Mystery Danger Island or wherever the hell this bullshit plane was taking them. Probably a barren ice shelf where Umbrella dumped its mistakes.

It was mid-morning when the fuel gauge officially read "empty." It was hard to tell how screwed they were, looking out the plane's windows was like peering through a glass of water with a bit of milk in it.

Abruptly, the plane slowed and started losing altitude. Then the autopilot switched off. Batgirl took the controls while Harley buckled herself into the copilot seat. Alarms blared, the plane shook, and if they were headed into the water or the side of a cliff, they didn't know. All Harley could say for sure was it was going to be a rough landing.

"I've always loved you!" shouted Harley at Batgirl, who was visibly panicked through her cowl.

"What!?"

"Just kiddin'. Thought the mood in here could use a little lightening up," said Harley. "Hey, what's yer real name? I wanna know before I die."

"Uh... Keri Kelly," said Batgirl, lying.

"Ha! I knew it!" Harley said, also lying.

The plane hit the ground hard. Had they not been belted in they'd have been broken against the ceiling. Batgirl held onto the yoke like it was a bucking bronco while the plane, oblivious to her efforts, skidded across what Harley hoped was a runway and not a barren ice shelf. Finally the plane stopped. Harley had to hand it to the Bat, either she was a damn good flier, or damn lucky.

They could see better on the ground than they had in the air. They had indeed come to a runway, and through the wisps of smoke-like snow, Harley could make out gray, horizontal lines, ninety-degree angles, bits of red and bright orange. Buildings.

"Hey, I wonder if we'll meet Penguin," said Harley. "Unless he gets his birds from the North Pole?"

"I wonder if Hatter is here as well," said Batgirl, they eyes of her cowl now milky white as the snow outside.

"I think us gettin' sent here was part his whole screwin' us over thing," said Harley.

"Maybe," said Batgirl. "I don't see anyone coming out for us... base looks kinda..."

"Don't say it," said Harley.

"I won't, but it's a possibility we need to be prepared for," she said.

Harley wondered how they were supposed to prepare for anything given their current state. She could feel the powerful cold seeping into the plane already. Leaving the cockpit for one of the buildings was going to be a frigid affair. She only hoped the doors weren't locked and that a functioning hot cocoa machine was somewhere inside.

"That's odd," said Batgirl.

"Kind of a relative term, donchya think?" said Harley.

Batgirl adjusted the goggles on her cowl, peering through the cockpit at a set of pipes that ran across the runway. "Those pipes are blazing hot," said Batgirl. "What the heck could be running through them?"

Harley shook her head, not caring, hoping the Bat would cut the crap and spot an open door or something. She was about to say as much, when Batgirl jumped. "Those aren't pipes!"

"No, they're tubes, obviously," Harley said, cold and pissed off. She forgot about being both when she saw what Batgirl had seen; the tubes were moving.

The tubes slid across the snow towards the plane, like the tentacles of a lazy squid, which, for all Harley knew, was exactly what they were. They hit the plane, bowling it over and knocking it into pieces. Harley and Batgirl went flying in a tangle of snow and steel. For Harley there was cold, then pain, then darkness.

**To be continued... **


	5. Chapter 5

**Five**

Harley awoke cold and unable to move. Shaking the fuzz from her brain, she saw she'd been laid out on a hospital bed, strapped down by her wrists, ankles, and waist, her arms stuck full of tubes and wires. She pulled at the restraints as hard as she could, figuring a broken or skinned wrist beat being pumped full of zombie-juice, or whatever Umbrella was injecting her with. She was about to begin chewing her arm off at the shoulder when she heard the hiss of an automatic door, and heavy plodding footsteps.

"Oh, figures!" said Harley, glaring up at Mr. Freeze. He stood by her bedside, dressed in a stripped-down version of the big-ass refrigerator suit he usually clunked around in, his bald, blueish head exposed, while a respirator covered his mouth. Protecting his eyes from the heat were his trademark red goggles.

"It's good to see you, too, Ms. Quinn. I suspected you'd find your way here, eventually," he said, the respirator making him sound like he spoke through a old, banged up radio.

"You did, did ya? How long you been workin' for 'em, Freeze? They gonna bring dear old Nora back as a zombie?"

Right away she knew that was the wrong thing to say to Mr. Freeze. Without making a sign that he'd heard her, he went over to one the machines she was plugged into and pushed a button. Harley figured she was about to meet a painful end, but instead she started feeling better. Warmer, even, despite the freezing cold air.

"You were badly injured when I found you," said Freeze.

"Yeah? What about Batgirl?"

"Dead, most likely," said Freeze. "As you might wish to be, very soon."

She wiggled against her straps, wanting to shove Mr. Freeze into an oven, or outside on a hot day in July, either one would kill him. "What are you gonna do to me?" she said.

"Set you free and hope you prevail, of course," said Freeze.

Harley's body went lip as she blew a puff of air noisily through here lips. "Freeze, I've had a long, long day. Can you just lay some exposition on me and get this over with?"

"Certainly," said Freeze. "Fifteen years ago, Umbrella's top virologist, Alexia Ashford, infected herself with a strain of the Progenitor virus dubbed "Veronica." You're no doubt familiar with the nature of Umbrella's viral research? Alexia sought to transcend her humanity, but in order for her to do so without going mad or mutating uncontrollably, she had to be put into a coma, or rather a carefully managed stasis, for an extended period of time. Her brother, Alfred, was aware of my work in the cryogenics field and hired me to manage Alexia's awakening."

Harley could guess where the rest of this story was going, but she was tired, and so let Freeze talk.

"All went according to plan. I was even able to push up their timeline by a few weeks. Alexia awoke yesterday, in the evening, just as we were receiving word that the Rockfort Island facility had been attacked," he said.

Harley remembered her meeting with Alan Whiskers, how he'd been distracted by something. Probably he had a radio or something in his ear.

"Yeah? Let me guess, Alexia woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

"Indeed, she did. I decided to avoid her after she ate several members of the staff," said Freeze. "Don't let her fool you, she may appear human at the moment, but she can mutate at will, adopting several powerful forms, from what I've seen."

"I'll take your word for it," said Harley. "So, since this all sounds like someone elese's problem, I think I'm just gonna leave."

Freeze chuckled, checking more gauges, dials, and knobs before he began taking the IV lines from Harley's arms. "She won't let anyone leave," said Freeze. "She controls the tentacles that destroyed your aircraft. There's a VTOL craft in one of the other hangers, but she'd swat it out of the sky immediately. No, you must kill Alexia Ashford or perish here."

With the tubes and wires out of Harley's arms, Freeze undid the straps holding her down. She sat up and rubbed her wrists, amazed at how warm she felt, given the frost covering all the room's metal surfaces.

Freeze noticed her befuddlement. "Some side effects of the treatments given to you are a resistance to cold and injury, though I wouldn't rely too much on the latter. Both are temporary."

"I just hope my insurance will cover it," she said. "What about you? You gonna help or what?"

"Since your straights are far more dire than mine, I'll be letting you assume the brunt of risk," said Freeze. "Come with me. You'll need weapons, and there are other things loose in this facility besides Alexia that may need to be dealt with."

"Figures," said Harley, following him out of the room. "Ooh, hey, do I get to use one of those awesome ice guns of yours!?"

He shook his bald, frosty head as he led her to a door helpfully labeled "Armory," and punched a code into the electronic lock. "The room where my weapons were kept was destroyed," he said, as the door opened with a sound like a soda can being popped. The walls inside were lined with shelves holding automatic rifles, shotguns, and semiautomatic pistols, but absolutely no awesome ice guns.

"Fortunately for you, Alexia didn't leave the staff with much time to access their own weapons," said Freeze, punching another code into another electronic lock, this one to a safe stuffed with boxes of ammunition. "Not that it would've done them much good."

"What's that now?" said Harley, already fixing a rifle and shotgun with shoulder straps she found in a bin. There were hip holsters there, too, of which she took several. It wasn't her fault Hatter hadn't designed her costume with any pockets.

"You're not going to kill Alexia with these weapons," said Freeze. "But you will need them if you want to access a weapon that will kill her."

Harley massaged her temples, wondering how much longer this goddamn fic was going to last. "I need another weapon? Like what, a laser cannon?"

"No," said Freeze, his job essentially done. "In one of the lower labs is a vaccine for the Veronica strain. It won't kill Alexia on its own, but it will weaken her to a point where the armament you're now carrying will have some effect."

He took what looked like a credit card from his pocket and held it out for Harley to take. "This will let you access the lower levels. The elevator on this floor works, but you may have to improvise when you get down there. I'll return to my safe room from where I can monitor the situation."

He limped off towards where Haley had found him, but not before telling her where to find said working elevator to the lower floors. Heavy with enough guns and ammo so that she didn't have to keep track of how many bullets she had between chapters, Harley located the elevator, more of a big service lift, really, and used the key card to make it descend.

-55-

It was cold in the dark halls of the lower levels. Harley could see her breath in the red glow of emergency lights, could see the frost forming around the edges of things, but she felt none of it. Her hand shot to her throat, relaxed when she felt her pulse. No, Freeze hadn't turned her into a zombie and lied about it.

The same could not be said for the Umbrella staff Alexia hadn't eaten, who'd all come down with a bad case of Hepatitis-Z. They moved stiffly in the corridors, their frozen bodies absorbing more bullets than normal before falling to the ground like they were made of wood instead of diseased flesh.

One brightly lit room Harley peeked in on had been turned into an ice rink by a burst water pipe. She fancied a bit of skating, but found somewhere else to be the moment the car-sized black spider on the ceiling moved.

Parts of the facility had been under construction when things went to hell. They looked to be tunneling into the bedrock to make room for a geothermal plant. Harley found the door to what must have been the lab where this vaccine lived in the middle of a wide catwalk. On the right side was the lab, on the left a thin, metal railing overlooking a deep chasm.

"Gee, I hope no one falls down there," she said. "They'd never be seen again."

The catwalk, which rounded a corner beyond the laboratory door, shook. Something walked on it, just out of sight. Harley scrambled for the key card, not wanting to deal with whatever the hell was coming her way, but it was too late. The thing rounded the corner and stopped when it saw Harley.

Just how it saw Harley, or saw anything for that matter, puzzled her, for covering its eyes was a leather blindfold held in place by heavy staples. It was a man, she supposed, ten feet tall if he was an inch, wearing a heavy straight jacket, one that penned his legs high so that he walked as if on stilts. Suddenly, his chest bulged. From out of a flap in his jacket pulsed a big, red, tumor-like heart.

Harley put several rifle rounds into that prominent, red target, feeling kinda bad as the thing struggled to free its arms. Harley was about to risk just pushing it over the railing when it let out an inhuman scream. From its back burst two long, jointed appendages, which to Harley looked like the hind legs of a grasshopper. They flailed about the monster's head, dripping purple ooze from their spiked ends.

Harley kept firing, the monster kept walking.

She was about to give up and run when the laboratory door opened and Alan Walker stepped out. He was just behind the monster, looking only mildly surprised to see it. He drove his shoulder into the thing's hip and used his legs to give it a hard, super-human shove over the railing. It flailed its bug-like appendages as it fell into the darkness, out of sight.

"Ms. Quinn, so good to see you again," Walkin' said.

"Oh?" Harley said, readying her shotgun. He'd have a hard time avoiding a blast on the narrow catwalk. "Remind me who you are, again, before I shoot yer ass."

"Albert Wesker," he said, holding up a large syringe filled with some purple fluid. "I'm guessing Freeze sent you to find this?"

"Yeah, and thanks for picking it up for me. Now hand it over!" she said, knowing he wouldn't, knowing she'd be lucky if she lived through the next sixty seconds. She hoped to at least shoot that smug look off his sunglassed face.

"Very well. You take the vaccine, I'll take the firearms. Personally, I think I'm better suited to giving Alexia her medicine while you do all the shooting," he said.

"Oh, like a truce! And later you betray me?"

Wanker nodded. That was good enough for Harley who pantomimed shaking his hand.

They went in the direction the straight-jacket horror had appeared from, Whelker leading the way, moving with the deliberate awkwardness of a man working hard to run slow. Deeper into the facility they went, down to where it felt like being in a mine shaft. The passage they followed emptied out into a circular area roughly the size of a soccer field. It was a giant lift, Harley saw, meant to move a great many things at once.

Or one big thing.

"That's her," Wilkins said, needlessly pointing out the nude woman standing in the middle of the platform. It was Alexia Ashford, alright. Harley saw the painter of her portrait back on the prison island really had nailed her eyes; even from a distance Harley could feel those horrible, alien peepers fixed on her very soul. "I'm going to try to talk to her, first. Get her to let her guard down. The moment I move, open fire."

"Alexia Ashford," said Wilcox, greeting the monster as they drew closer. "My name is Albert Wesker. I represent Umbrella Incorporated. I'm glad to see your awakening was a success."

"Yeah, good mornin'," said Harley. "I'm glad I wasn't part of the balanced breakfast."

Wesker's head snapped sideways, his glare nearly melting his sunglasses. Harley thought she even saw a glowing red eye through the tint of the lens, as if Wesker was rippin' off the Terminator. Wait, _was he a terminator?_ Harley was a clown who'd been shooting zombies for the past six weeks, or however long it had been, why couldn't there be Terminators?

"Ms. Ashford, I've been sent to assist you in taking your place as head of the company," Wesker said, slowly approaching the woman, who's horrible eyes looked right past him to Harley.

"Congratulations on yer promotion!" said Harley. "I take it you've already had time to sleep on it?"

Alexia walked past him, towards Harley, who hoped she liked clowns. Oh, who was she kiddin', nobody likes clowns... "Eh, you know what? You two got business stuff to talk about, so I'm just gonna go," said Harley.

Wesker made his move. In the blink of an eye he caught up to Alexia and plunged the syringe into her neck. Her beautiful, mask-like face split into a scream of rage and she went up in flames, confusing the hell out of Harley, who doubted vaccines were supposed to do that.

Wesker seemed shocked, too, as he backed away from the pillar of fire Alexia had become. Her hair caught fire like a curtain made in the 1970s, her lovely skin blackened and slid off, her muscles rippled and twisted as if they were boiling, making Harley worry, since muscles didn't really do that when torched.

The flames went out and there stood Alexia 2.0, gray skinned, with green tentacles for hair and weird, leafy growths up one side her body. She lashed out with her mutated arm, snatching Wesker from a dozen feet away, pulling him in. He struggled but Alexia had him hooked and hung like a cow in a PETA video, ripping his head from his shoulders.

"I knew the anti-vaxxers were onta somethin'!" Harley shouted, firing her rifle into Alexia. All the bullets hit, doing what bullets do, tearing flesh, breaking bone, slicing open blood vessels. Don't forget the impact trauma, people always did. Alexia screamed and flung gooey string of her own blood at Harley, who would've dodged it even if it hadn't caught fire mid-air.

Harley kept moving in a circle around Alexia, concentrating on not being hit with flaming gobs of blood over shooting back. Even so, Harley got her shots in just fine, riddling the thing's odd form with high caliber bullets. When Alexia fell to her knees, Harley thought she'd won; the vaccine really had worked and Jim Carrey could suck it.

But she hadn't won. Alexia burst into flames once more, her humanoid form melting into a pile of sludge that boiled and grew. The mass kept growing after the flames went out, huge tumors forming and splitting open to reveal green, glassy compound eyes. Other boils forming on the churning, fleshy mass erupted into seemingly random appendages, transparent wings, claws, pincers, mandibles, even deformed spinnerets that dribbled a milky white fluid.

"Oh god, that's disgusting," said Harley, not even sure what part of the thing she should shoot at. "I think I'm gonna throw up."

She'd run out bullets for the rifle, so she threw it and unslung the shotgun from her shoulder, just as dozens of chihuahua-sized crab monsters came scuttling out of the Alexia-blob's body. "Ew! Get 'em away, get 'em away!" Harley shrieked, running around as if she were on fire, blasting crab-critters left and right as they leaped at her.

The thought of touching one of the little beasts made her skin crawl, so she headed for the exit, only to see it hit with a giant wad of greenish goo coughed up by the Alexia-blob. Harley skidded to a stop in front of the snot-ball, seeing it was infested with scores of those little crab bastards, like tadpoles in whatever that stuff frogs eggs came in.

Harley did throw up in her mouth a bit on seeing that, but quickly turned around to shoot what was left of her bullets into the Alexia-blob. She wobbled on her feet as the lift suddenly came to life, slowing raising everything upward.

The blob wasn't moving, neither were the little crab mutants it had spawned that Harley hadn't yet shot. They twitched on the floor, the life leaving their misbegotten bodies, saving Harley the trouble. The Alexia-blob, alive and oozing before, had dried out, like an old, bloody booger.

"Whoo-hoo! I killed it! Aww, come on!"

It was the peak of an emotional roller-coaster seeing the blob pop open at the top, seeing Alexia's new body pull itself out, spread its wings, and after a few hard pumps, take flight.

Buzzing above Harley's head as the lift continued slowly upward was some kind of dragonfly-wasp-Alexia hybrid. It swooped at her with alarming speed, meaning to impale her with the foot-long stinger sticking from the end of her thorax. Harley dodged, fired the shotgun, missed. The dance they began had one sequence, Alexia would fly high, into the shadows out of range from Harley's shotgun, diving silently, leaving Harley not time to properly fire back and avoid being killed.

On and on it went, until Harley found herself out of shells. She dropped the shotgun and had better lucking stinging Alexia with pistol rounds, but her exoskeleton was hard and the hits far outnumbered by misses. Harley doubted things would be much better when the lift stopped, for Alexia would still have enough room in whatever warehouse or hanger they were headed for to keep attacking from the air.

When Alexia stopped diving and began spitting, Harley knew she was screwed. She could dodge the baseball-sized wads of sticky acid well enough, but they clung to the floor and sizzled, like little landmines Harley didn't think she could avoid forever.

And she was right. While leaping over a noxious pile, Alexia hit her with a spit-wad right in the back of the head. Harley yanked off her cap and bells in an instant, tossing the thing away while it melted. Another hit like that and she'd be Two-Face's new sidekick. Yuck.

"Harley!"

"Ah, a g-g-ghost!" Harley stammered, hearing Batgirl's voice from up where the lift was about to stop. Harley looked up to see some sort of object falling towards her. It hit her in the chest, knocking the wind from her lungs and the balance from her ass. She sat on the floor, wheezing, while Batgirl swung around on her grappling hook, throwing baterangs at Alexia.

The thing Batgirl dropped — that had probably cracked Harley's sternum — looked like a mini-fridge with its casing removed. Harley soon realized it was a gun. Lifting it, she found the trigger, found Alexia in the targeting screen, and fired. Or rather, she iced. Somehow, flying in the face of physics, the fridge-lookin' gun-thing fired an icy bolt of something or rather that hit Alexia in the chest, encasing her top-half in ice. Harley fired again, and again, encasing the abdomen, and finally the wings. Alexia fell onto the lift, shattering into a thousand pieces.

"Ice," said Haley, nodded in a satisfied way. "Ya know, like, niiice, but iiice, eh, forget it."

"What?" said Batgirl, swooping to the ground as the lift stopped.

"Nothing," said Harley, seeing they'd been brought to a giant airplane hanger. "Oh, hey, you're alive! Freeze made it sound like you were dead."

"Sorry to disappoint," said Batgirl. "I've been gutting this place's computer databases. I've got all I need to destroy Umbrella forever. And it looks like we took care of Alexia."

Freeze entered the hanger, his limp less noticeable than before. He hobbled over to what was left of Alexia, as if not sure it had been her. Harley couldn't blame him. He nodded gravely, then approached. "Well done. I'll be having that device back now, thank you," he said, his hand out to Harley, his red-lensed glare on Batgirl.

"Did he have this the entire time?" Harley asked.

"Yeah. I found it while snooping through the base. Thought it might come in handy," said Batgirl.

Freeze looked scared behind his creepy red goggles. He had reason to be. "Now, wait just a minute..." he started to say, when Harley pulled the ice gun's trigger. A loud buzzing sound, a flash of light, and Freeze was encased in a block of ice. Harley gave him a nudge and fell over.

"He needed to cool off," said Harley.

Batgirl opened her mouth to say, "Stop with the fucking ice puns," but then a siren went off, loud enough to rattle bones.

"Alert," sounded a heavy, robotic voice through hidden speakers. "The self-destruct sequences has been activated. Authorized personnel report to designated areas."

"He won't be fine," said Harley.

"Come on, grab him!" said Batgirl, taking the frozen Mr. Freeze by his icy shoulders.

They ended up putting him in a freezer which they slid into the cargo area of a sleek-looking VTOL parked on the far end of the hanger. Batgirl was able to turn it on and get it in the air, flying it out a hole in the hangar ceiling that had opened up once the self-destruct sequence had activated. Harley sat in the copilot seat, looking through all the papers she found in the craft's various compartments for previously logged flight plans.

She didn't find any. What she found instead was a map, one that showed there was another base an hour's flight away, to the west.

"U.S. Outpost 31," said Harley. "Can't be any worse than here."

The VTOL shook as the base below exploded. Batgirl checked some instruments against the map. "Agreed."

They flew into the bright, clear sky over billowing dunes of snow. Harley looked back, through the windows, to see what she could of the exploded base.

"Oh, I forgot to say, I think it was Aaron Walker who blew up your bat boat," Harley said.

"Who?"

"The guy, with the sunglasses. The one I told you about."

"Really? How do you know it was him?"

"I dunno. Who else woulda done it? He seemed like the type."

"Well, that doesn't mean..." Batgirl just kinda trailed off, having the same problem as Harley. Who blew up the bat boat if not Wesker? Hatter? He'd have admitted it when asked, no reason to deny it.

"Eh, screw him. He's dead anyhow," said Harley.

**The (loose) end.**


End file.
